Alan Coleman's

I’ve been using Google Analytics a lot recently and at work it’s become an invaluable tool that guides all our online activity. The wealth and sheer depth of information available is staggering, as is the functionality afforded the user courtesy of their front end developers. This is what can be achieved when you have a budget like NASA and an equally sizable resource of talent! That’s not to take anything away from the application though, from a business perspective it’s difficult to imagine how we ever managed without this kind of feedback before. From a developers perspective I found the information at hand especially useful when rewriting URLs in a friendly fashion and anticipating any potential damage.

I think this kind of application is what Web 2.0 is really about, and more importantly it represents a turning point in the history of the web and how we develop it.

So is Google Analytics better than The Poseidon Adventure? The only reason I’m asking that question is because it’s on the box behind the one I’m typing this blog entry on, and it’s a brilliant film. A badly acted 70s seascape epic about scantily clad women trying to escape from an upturned liner. Whilst Google has certainly had an impact on my life professionally, it’s not yet at the point where it’s going to overtake the effect that Susan Shelby had on a 11 year boy from suburban Essex.

As the spring sun shone through our office window this morning I came across a couple of great things online that made the already great day even better.

The first is an online code editing app from Mozilla Labs called Bespin (Bespin video). Although only in Alpha at the time of going to press its potential is already mind blowing, a fully functioning browser based coding environment that keeps your file in the cloud. Fantastic. There’s more, included is a dashboard style file manager and command line functionality. The whole thing is put together with JavaScript using the HTML 5 Canvas Element and makes for an intuitive work area that I’m sure will at some stage offer some sort of CVS.

The second item from today is the discovery of Personas, which is also from Mozilla Labs. Essentially it’s a plug-in for the Firefox browser that allows users to skin their browser in a variety of different patterns and themes. It’s all in real time so as you navigate down the list the whole browser changes before your very eyes. Okay, it offers no additional functionality, but it does look good, great in fact.

On the same lovely morning someone sent me a link regarding an extension to Microsoft’s Expression web environment that checks your web layout in IE 6,7 and 8. So is this an admission from Microsoft that their browsers are incompatible with each other? Or just an acknowledgement that their browsing capability is a badly organised, over funded river of shit that simply does not work properly.

Redmond, you are a long way behind.

I have a couple of great additions to my world of web development that are worthy of a mention.

The first is the discovery of WebDevRadio, a site based around a set of regularly updated podcasts on web development issues. The podcasts themselves are hosted by Michael Kimsal, an genuinely friendly bloke who discusses anything from the weather in his part of the world to the finer points of his favourite PHP class of the moment. It’s all very listenable and down to earth, in fact he comes across like he’s talking it over with a few mates down the pub. On the back of listening to the latest podcast whilst doing my ironing (2 shirts, that was it) I tried to find some UK based podcasts and came across Fresh Egg, a design and marketing agency who I think are based out of Reading in Berkshire (shit county). If it’s not Reading then I apologise, but not to the people of Berkshire (shit county). Their podcasts stand in complete contrast to those of Michael Kimsal, both in terms of delivery and content. For a start, their overwhelming self importance gives listeners the feeling of being spoken down to, not good. Then there’s the intensely annoying accents, that middle England sixth form slur copied from daytime Radio 1. The content isn’t much better, instead of insightful discussion the podcasts contain a series know it all sound bites designed to fool potential clients into thinking that ‘These guys really know their stuff’. A truly awful listening experience.

Americans? Best music, best literature and best web development podcasts.

The second point I’d like to talk about is my new Whiteboard. It sits on the wall next to my desk and came complete with a set of coloured pens and accessories. It’s a really good way of visualising concepts, brainstorming ideas or even just a large area to design schemas or normalise database tables. Big, long sweeping coloured arrows make for a great environment to refer back to at the turn of the head. It’s a bit like being at school but without getting laughed at in the showers after cross country. The thing is, all of the above is just a way of avoiding what I’m stuck on at work, ISAPI_rewrite. Oh joy.

I’ve been working on the same project for several months now so haven’t really had the opportunity to mess around with new web page layout ideas. After looking around at what’s going on in the more visual fields of web design and development I was amazed at how much things have changed in such a short period of time.

All of a sudden, the web is looking great. It’s almost as if the whole thing has had a makeover following the initial hype of Web 2.0. Or maybe this is Web 2.0, it’s just that it took a little longer to happen than we at first thought it would.

One area of development that is particularly interesting at the moment is JavaScript libraries. I’ve made some fairly dramatic structural changes to our site at work using JavaScript working in conjunction with the Document Object Model, but these are scripts that I’ve written myself for a particular purpose and as such are fairly bullet proof. A library takes it a step further by offering the kind of functionality that I’d never have the time to develop.

My initial impressions of the Mootools framework was excitement tinged with the usual IE disappointment, and because of its Object Orientated nature I found debugging to be a much more drawn out process. Although it has to be said, that in itself was a superb lesson in Object Orientation.

Although we’re yet to go live with any of the functionality I’ve been playing with, it is great fun, there are simply hours of pleasure to be had from playing around with the framework and snippets of code. The whole thing reminded me of unwrapping my first metal toolbox as a child (Blue Hamerite finish).

Mootools

This is a great website too http://css-tricks.com/

2008s project at work will be the next step in our re branding exercise, the development of an in house application to manage our content, otherwise known as a CMS. The technology will come courtesy of Microsoft’s .NET framework, that being a logical progression from the classic ASP (Visual Basic) set up used to create the web site and Intranet.

It is an exiting, if terrifying prospect, one that threatens a complete immersion in a whole new area of uncharted technology. However there is hope, already the human logic of those that developed this framework has started to show itself as little different from those from the open source sector. For instance, I felt almost at home with the concept of Microsoft’s Data Tier Components, and begrudgingly acknowledged that someone has probably put a great deal of thought into what I’ve always known as, Layer Separation.

This is only the beginning of a momentous project, but what is clear already is that the .NET Framework is not quite the bloated WYSIWYG editor that people like me used to say it was.

What’s this, Something positive about Microsoft?

Maybe, only time will tell.

When I first built my website things where different, the web was still very much a media to look at and navigate, rather than to interact with like it is now. Initially I hand built HTML pages to show my photos and organised the various albums into a file structure, to save on server space and download times I compressed all the images down to 30k. Laughable when you think about what we can do now, but it served a purpose. They were my photos on my website and I thought that was a million miles away from having them sit in dusty Truprint envelopes under the bed.

From flat pages I moved to an open source CMS, Plogger, that I hosted and adapted to my own needs, and whilst it wasn’t great it made the process of publishing photos less painfull. But as with most things in life, the novelty wears off. As much as one would like to, there isn’t time to get stuck in and develop functionality and improved scripting because there’s too much of that to do at work. When this happens things don’t get used and stagnate, it becomes a corner of the web that sits redundant. I don’t update my photos because there’s no technological incentive, and I still have to work everything through Photoshop. More importantly, it’s not a scalable solution both in terms of time and space.

Also, there’s privacy to consider and this is going to be a big deal over the next few years. My brother has always said that he doesn’t want pictures of himself on the web, a little paranoid maybe, but its also his right and I should respect that. My other brother has kids and pictures of them is a whole different ball game. I don’t have the time to develop permissions on my own site so that only family or friends can see them, so why not let flickr do it for me?

I’d always thought of flickr as a site for people who didn’t have their own site, which is of course, ridiculous. For a few quid a month I get to upload an unlimited amount of images at whatever resolution comes off my camera, that’s really good. Not only that, the application interface works better than a desktop operating system, who could have predicted that we would be at this point so soon?

To a certain extent I’m admitting defeat, my photo folder cant possibly keep up with what the people at Yahoo can offer, and to not embrace it would be as pointless as it is unpractical. I know this isn’t in keeping with the pioneering spirit of open source development, but that spirit is based on ideal scenarios of intelligence and time, both of which I don’t have an endless supply of.

So what if the photos aren’t on my site, the web is changing, and that was always going to happen.

I wrote earlier this week about the rebranding process we’re going through at work, and the problems that have surfaced regarding static legacy pages. The curse of the WYSIWYG has reeked havoc amongst the ranks, the files now stand in line like badly disciplined soldiers that refuse to obey the CSS, no matter how much they scream and shout… Or maybe that’s stretching it a bit far.

There is another enemy at play, tables. Not only that but nested tables and loads of them too, with those 1px high images that push the cells open. These are the most time consuming hurdles, trying to figure out what sits within what and why. Almost all of them serving no purpose apart from contributing to the endemic code bloat.

It’s sometimes difficult trying to balance time between doing what I think I should do, and what I actually have time for. To a certain extent rebranding an old website, built by someone else with no regard to any sort of standards, is an exercise in damage limitation.

There are busy times ahead. The company I work for as a web developer is changing its name, brand and identity. It is, to say the least, a task that involves an incredible amount of commitment and organisation from every aspect of the business.

The initial meetings of a few months ago seemed like a formality, just do this then that then everything else should slot into place, that was the plan anyway. Everything seems so easy when scribbled down in a flow diagram with arrows in yellow highlighter, and I’ve always found that approach to be quite good for holding back from getting stuck in.

There comes a point, as with anything in life, when the talking stops and the physical activity has to begin, which is usually the point where the scale of the undertaking is realised. The web site in question has evolved over a number of years and apart from some basic product titles and codes it is entirely static. It does however employ some fairly cool code that communicates with our CRM and back end on the fly, this is its saving grace.

Photoshop Elements, a fantastic product and a piece of marketing genius. A stripped down version of the fully fledged software install, with all the functionality you’re likely to need unless you work in Hoxton or drink Latte Coffee or wear a Nike Windcheater. Ideal for developers like myself who just need to cut and crop and maybe do bit of contrast correction. It had the Adobe professional interface from Illustrator and Photoshop so if you learnt on one then it’s all easy, same menus, same shortcuts, same everything. All for about £50 – it’s all good, as everyone says now.

So Photoshop Elements, it’s all good. At least it was.

So there I was in one job using my trusty old Elements to great effect, then I got made redundant and moved on to my current position and they used Illustrator for Photo manipulation. Bad as it is impossible. No, “Elements” I said nodding happily, “That’s all I need”.

Elements turns up and it’s version 5 which I start to get exited about. After loading it up however, nothing could have prepared me for the horror that awaited me in my new bling monitor. I actually felt my heart drop with disappointment as I looked at my beloved Elements in utter amazement.

It’s been domesticated. By that I mean it now looks like the kind of thing that you got free with a cheap digital camera in 2003. Gone is the familiar interface, shortcuts and working environment, and in its place are huge buttons and tacky picture album templates. It is, f**king awful. Nothing works now, a prime example is the resize tool that you can no longer constrain with the shift key! The most basic piece of Adobe functionality!

Also, it’s made the Microsoft mistake of trying to be too helpful. It leaves an icon in the tray that leaps into action whenever a new device appears, helpfully looking for photos. “No, stop! Go away, I don’t want you to help me find those pictures tucked away deep in the bottom of my Flash thingy”

So now I’ve got to go back to the IT manager and ask for CS like a greedy student who’s never satisfied. I’ll never use most of the functionality and the company will have to float on the stock market to afford it.

If it’s not broken, please, don’t fix it.

I think I’m okay when it comes to technology, not like a geeky genius or anything, but able to have at least a limited grasp of how digital devices work and interact with each other. There are times however when I can’t get my head round simple concepts of usability, like mobile phones for example, which I still find difficult to use after ten nearly years use (has it really been that long?).

One of the biggest usability hurdles in my life is the touch screen ticket machine, which I find so infuriatinlg difficult to understand that I have to get someone else to operate them for me. Mind you, shouting obscenities at yourself in an underground station isn’t always the best way to get people to help you.

Okay so this is sounding a bit tabloid now, overweight middle aged white men moaning about technological progress, but I really think I’ve got a point here.

There are two issues at play, architecture and design. Both intrinsic to each other as well as to a satisfactory user experience. What is happening is that they are both being overlooked in the rush to provide machines, shut the ticket offices and of course, save money. A depressingly common theme as we use technological advancement for economic rather than customer benefit.

From an architecture point of view the information, or products on sale, are usually always organised in a manner more in keeping with a database structure rather than a humanistic one. This leads to a confusing mass of information that takes so long to digest that the ‘See more’ button at the bottom is usually overlooked. Nothing really seems to make sense as my brain struggles to keep up with the sheer weight of content.

A better way to arrange content would be to display the most popular stations choosen in the last 12 hours, plot that to a calendar for obvious variations and it won’t be long before the initial choices will change depending on the time, day and even weather. More human, more dynamic.

Which brings me neatly to design, which never really seems to extend much further than the default Visual Basic buttons laid onto a dodgy train montage. It simply doesn’t work, and the ticket machines abroad aren’t much better either, same layout, same buttons. The machines on the Berlin Metro are to usability what Helmut Cole was to tightrope walking. You know we have a problem when the Germans can’t get it right!

It’s quite obvious that these processes are put together by IT staff or web developers who have no interest or experience in Information Architecture or the fundamental tenets of usability. If you like, an unwelcome distraction from the joy of working with the Internet. Interface design is a disciple in its own right that deserves thought, creativity and above all, testing.